One of Canada’s most pressing and sensitive issues lately is housing affordability — the country is starved for solutions, and it takes more than a few pronouncements to convince people. On Friday last week, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre did just that — meaning he made some pronouncements — and people on Twitter weren’t buying.
At a recent event, Poilievre brought back his plan to sell off 15% of 37,000 “big, ugly, empty” federal buildings to convert them into affordable housing.
Many Twitter users dismissed it as another of Poilievre’s populist appeals, basically saying that it sounds much, much easier said than done.
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One user pointed out that he would “rather see bigger plans to grow existing small cities and create new ones. Canada is too focused on a small number of urban areas where growth is expensive and slow.” Another agreed and added that commutes are too long.
Some criticized the plan for being “superficial,” emphasizing that the logistics may not be practical or even feasible. “For starters,” he said, “most office floors only have one or two washrooms” which highlights that the plan will cost more planning and money than how Poilievre makes it sound.
Others, meanwhile, focused more on the definition of “affordable” these days, and whether affordable private housing would actually be affordable, with another responding that all of the Conservative leader’s plans would do is “allow wealthy corporate and individual investors to control more housing.”
Canadian lawyer and political satirist Caryma Sa’d, who shared the video, pointed out what people already know too well: “there is no single solution to the housing crisis.” She called for “real solutions, not fantasies about sticking it to the CBC.”
Poilievre has repeatedly made populist appeals on the topic of housing but has yet to offer an operational plan or a realistic idea that would help people see how it could actually be done.
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